Best Handbags 2018

Welcome to the best of 2018 handbags section. Some years a handbag list needs a dozen bags; this year one bag is the story. The iconic Louis Vuitton canvas is the perfect blank page to express the uniqueness of this Masters Collection piece of art — a Montaigne bag carrying a Monet painting.

Sophisticated and feminine, the Montaigne bag is twisted for the first time with this exclusive collaboration: gold Monogram serti, reflective metallic letters and colored trimmings. An exclusive leather lining — embossed, printed and filled with gold — tells you more about this unexpected collaboration every time the bag is opened.

The Bag: Montaigne MM, Style M43381

The Masters LV x KOONS collection of luxury designer handbags pairs the house's classic shapes with masterpieces of painting, and the Montaigne MM carries Claude Monet — the water-lily light of the impressionist master spread across the structured silhouette of one of the house's most businesslike bags. The result is a handbag that is also a framed picture: you do not just carry it, you exhibit it, handle side up.

The specifications are a working bag's, not a novelty's: style number M43381, measuring 33 x 23 x 15 cm (13.0 x 9.1 x 5.9 inches) — a true MM, sized for documents, a tablet and a day's necessities. The body is canvas, the trimmings are calf leather, the lining is cowhide leather, and the hardware story is told in colored metallic elements, with a detachable charm in calf leather and colored metal.

Inside the Bag

Here is a look inside the bag — a look inside before you load it with all of your own goodies after you purchase this beauty. The interior is organized the way the Montaigne line is known for: a removable shoulder strap for the carry options, two internal flat pockets for the things you reach for without looking, and one internal zipped pocket for the things you cannot afford to lose.

The lining is the collaboration's second artwork. Embossed, printed and filled with gold, it turns the inside of the bag into a private gallery — the part of the Masters idea that only the owner sees. Luxury usually spends itself on the visible surface; spending it on the lining is the older, quieter definition of the word, and it is a large part of why this bag, of all the handbags of 2018, gets a page of its own.

Why an Art Collaboration Leads the Year

Fashion and fine art have borrowed from each other for a century, but the Masters collection made the borrowing literal and total: not an inspiration, not a print inspired by a painting, but the painting itself, reproduced across the bag with the artist's name in reflective metallic letters. Critics could argue about whether a masterpiece belongs on a handbag; consumers simply had to decide whether they wanted to carry a Monet. Enough of them did to make the collaboration the handbag conversation of its season.

For a best-of list, that settles the question differently than usual. The best handbag of a year is not always the most useful or the most beautiful — sometimes it is the one the year will be remembered by. A structured top-handle bag wearing water lilies, with gold Monogram work and a gilded printed lining, is 2018's entry in that category: the bag other bags of the year are footnotes to.

Carrying a Painting: Practical Notes

A printed-canvas art bag asks for slightly different care than a plain leather one. The canvas body shrugs off the scuffs that mark smooth leather, but the printed surface should be kept out of prolonged direct sun, which fades pigment, and wiped with a soft dry cloth rather than solvents. The calf trimmings take ordinary leather care; the colored metallic elements and the detachable charm should be kept dry and stored inside the bag, in a pouch, when the bag is put away.

The two carries matter to the bag's working life. Hand or elbow carry on the top handles keeps the Montaigne's structured, gallery-piece posture; the removable shoulder strap turns it into a shoulder bag for transit. At 33 cm wide it is a day bag, not an evening bag — pair it with the small-pouch strategy for nights out, and let the Monet do the evening's talking from the coat check.

More Handbags, More Years

This page is deliberately a spotlight rather than a survey. The wider best handbags guide covers the category across years, and the 2017 handbag cluster — a full list plus Valentino and Givenchy spotlights — sits one click away in the best handbags of 2017. Be patient if you came looking for a longer 2018 list: more fabulous handbags were promised for this page, and patience, as the saying on this page has always gone, is a virtue.

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